


that which binds

by temporalDecay



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, Sense8 Cluster AU, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9218501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: They run. They cry. They fight. They love. They hate. They lose. They win. And together, they stand.Sense8 cluster AU vignettes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just had the best worst (or worst best, jury's still out on this one) idea, so I had to write it. This is going to be vaguely disjointed, but I liked the way it flowed. So we'll see how it goes.

  


* * *

  


_i. they run_

  


* * *

  


He feels their pain. 

Echoing, growing, rolling. 

It stretches thin and tenuous across the world, sinking in deep to bind in ways that cannot be broken, and have not been bound in eons. 

He feels their pain. It lingers on his tongue, thick and solid and almost as real as he's not. 

A great wrong has been committed, to birth such a great pain. 

Swelling, coiling, bursting. 

He knows pain. He knows the knots, the webs, the unraveling threads of self. He might be lost, forgotten, forsaken, but he knows what needs to be done. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  


The mark burns bright green in her palm. 

She hears them – shapeless, endless, horrors that bore no name – scuttle after her, the floor barely solid under her feet, and the scream refuses to slide past her throat. 

The woman stands, back to the light, face shadowed, but still, she seems kind. 

Still, she seems safe. 

Better than the scuttling. Or the pain threatening to split her head in half. 

She runs. 

  


* * *

  


He'd meant to escape. 

He's good at escaping. He's good at lying for the greater good – or the selectively chosen good. He's good at not being noticed. 

He'd meant to run away, at the first chance he got. 

But then he'd seen the world not end after an explosion that felt like it should have made it end, and the flickers of green linger in his palm when he looks at it from the corner of his eye. 

He'd meant to escape. 

Bianca is heavy and almost jugdamental in his hands. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  


She's the first one on her feet, after the explosion. 

She's the first one to see the sky burst open, like an infected wound oozing rot. 

She's the first one to run towards the ruins. 

She's the first one to sink her sword into a demon's flesh. 

But she is the only one to hear the scuttling at her back, the only one to see a ghost of that same cursed green glowing in her palm. 

The Divine is dead. 

She runs. 

  


* * *

  


He stands on the edge. 

The road goes on, sliding away from the cliff and back to the forest, but he remains there. He's tired and worn, and he knows he should make camp soon. But the emptiness beyond the cliff calls to him, two steps more and nothing else. 

He stands on the edge, waiting, breathing, existing. 

Then the sky bursts open in the distance and the pain strikes like lightning, threatening to split his core in half. 

He finds himself on his knees, clutching the edge with white knuckles and the glimmer of green still clinging to his hand. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  


She misses her mark. 

That's not, in itself, unusual. That's why you shoot more than once. That's why you shoot as many arrows as you can. One of them ought to hit them where it hurts. 

The point is she stops, after she misses. 

She waits, the tip of her ears twitching, tingling. She doesn't know for what. She doesn't know why. 

Then the sky bleeds green, and the whole world seems to swim on it. 

“Fuck it,” she says, to herself, to the world, to the shadow of pain clinging to her palm. 

She runs. 

  


* * *

  


He knows himself. 

It is his only comfort, despite it all. A liar's only truth. To know, deep down, who remains beneath the must and the should of everyday life. 

He knows himself. 

He recognizes instantly, the weight of Other in his head. The extra thoughts and the extra feelings, far more poignant and worrisome than the pain in his hand or the hole in the sky. 

He knows himself. 

But then Krem bursts into the tavern, face ashen pale, and he must do what he knows he should. That's how it always goes. He ignores the cold hook digging into his ribs and tugging him elsewhere. The must and the should are the only thing that keep him from himself. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  


She doesn't stumble. 

She knows better, than to stumble. She holds it in, the scream and the barrage of glass as she stops it from raining when the windows burst in an echo of the sky caving in. 

“My Lady!” The soldier cries out, shocked, begging. 

She sees her hand glow, pale, shivering, not her own. 

She doesn't stumble. 

She's too graceful, too sly, too certain that death could only follow, if she did. So in her own way and at her own pace, she does what she knows she must. 

She runs. 

  


* * *

  


He's not afraid. 

Fear is the sharpest knife he owns, the only weapon he's never known to not strike true. He keeps it sheathed, nonetheless, as Kirkwall is a cesspool of it, overflowing with it, and he so loathes to overstate the obvious. 

He's not afraid. 

He clenches his hand until the faint shimmer fades away, and turns furtive eyes to see if anyone saw. The faces are gaunt and terrified, but their gaze keeps to the sky, swollen with misery and magic gone wrong. 

He's not afraid. 

And yet. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  


He has failed. 

He feels the precise moment it all becomes for naught, the ripples across the Fade and the yawning loneliness of his own mind. The echoes refuse to come, nothing resonates to the inner music of his soul. 

He has failed. 

The Veil has been torn asunder, but it refuses still to fall down on the stage. The play remains ongoing. 

He has failed. 

But, he reminds himself, for there is no one else to hear his thoughts and recall the memory for him, he has failed before. And out of failure rose his power, his dignity. 

Wolves are meant to run packs, to share themselves to the whole. But those that do survive, lone and feral, are all the more dangerous because of it. 

He has failed. 

But it has not yet ended. He is alone, still, the frayed edges where there used to be more are nothing but a reminder of what he's determined to make so, once more. 

He runs. 

  


* * *

  



End file.
